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Forking at perfection

Forking at perfection Ian Cheng - Forking at perfection
Documenting Ian Cheng's latest “live simulations”—virtual living ecosystems in autonomous evolution—this monograph engages in a dialogue between art, new technologies and neurosciences.
This monographic publication delivers an exploration of Ian Cheng's most recent “live simulations,” and the state of human consciousness in the digital era. In addition the book highlights the artist's crucial point of reference—the controversial evolutionary history of human self-awareness by American psychologist Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976). The publication includes contributions by Ian Cheng, Raphael Gygax, and Franziska Bigger, and a selection of texts by the artist. Published with the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich.
Published following the eponymous exhibition at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, from February 20 to May 16, 2016.
The work of the American artist Ian Cheng (born 1984 in Los Angeles, lives and works in New York) explores the nature of mutation and people's capacity to relate to change. Drawing on principles of video game design, improvisation, and Darwinian brutality, Cheng has developed so-called “live simulations,” virtual living ecosystems that begin with basic programmed properties, but that are left to evolve without authorial control or aim. His simulations model the dynamics of often-imaginary organisms and ecologies, but do so with the unforgiving causality found in nature itself. Cheng, who studied cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley, describes his simulations as akin to a “neurological gym”: a format for viewers to deliberately exercise the feelings of confusion, anxiety, and cognitive dissonance that accompany the experience of unrelenting change.
Edited by Raphael Gygax.
Texts by Ian Cheng, Raphael Gygax, Franziska Bigger.
 
published in June 2016
English edition
17,3 x 23,5 cm (hardcover)
144 pages (64 color ill.)
 
40.00
 
ISBN : 978-3-03764-471-3
EAN : 9783037644713
 
in stock
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